Sam Leith: All of us have been damaged by Plebgate

When reasonable people are given cause not to trust the police — not in court, not in public statements, not in the routine commission of their duties — the hurt to Andrew Mitchell is just the start of the damage done

The conspiracy to discredit Mr Mitchell was casual. The destruction of his reputation was undertaken lightly (Picture: Reuters)

When Andrew Mitchell was first accused of calling police officers “plebs”, I wrote in this spot that — though it was impossible to know what had actually happened — I inclined to believe the written testimony of more than one police officer against that of a man whose career depended on not having said what they claimed he did.

That seemed to me a reasonable judgment. That it was dead, dead wrong should give us serious pause: most of us depend on the idea that the police, as enforcers of law and guarantors of civic order, are on the whole honest; especially when they’ve no obvious reason to be otherwise.

Three things emerge very clearly from what we now know about Plebgate, and they tend strongly to suggest a fourth.

1) The conspiracy to discredit Mr Mitchell appears to have been a casual one. Nothing much — except the annoyance of a couple of officers on the spot — was at stake. Nobody’s back was against the wall. The destruction of Mr Mitchell’s reputation was undertaken lightly.

2) The conspiracy was, looked at in its unravelling, slapdash. It was stupid, thoughtless, sloppy, incompetent. The officer pretending to have been a civilian bystander, it has been pointed out, submitted a statement that was actually capitalised according to the stylebook for a police incident report. It didn’t open: “Has I was proceeding in a Westerly direction on Whitehall hat 19:40 hours …” but it might as well have. Officers present at a subsequent meeting with Mr Mitchell, which they immediately lied about, didn’t even bother to wonder if they were being taped. They were.

3) For the conspiracy to proceed, it required whichever officer first decided to stitch up the then Chief Whip to approach more than one colleague for help doing so, knowing he was suborning improper behaviour from, er, the police — and yet being confident that the answer would be “Sure”, rather than “Are you joking?” or “You’re nicked.”

The fourth thing is this. That serving officers with everything to lose and nothing much to gain would appear to engage in a casual, slapdash, ad hoc conspiracy very strongly suggests that they felt entirely confident in getting away with it because, baldly, they do this sort of thing all the time. I don’t pretend this is probative. But it is certainly the conclusion that very many people will draw. Hard not to, when barefaced and malevolent public misleading statements are described as “errors of judgment” and two forces decide the officers concerned need face no disciplinary action.

When reasonable people are given cause not to trust the police — not in court, not in public statements, not in the routine commission of their duties — the hurt to Andrew Mitchell is just the start of the damage done.

Sven’s ‘so what?’ sex life

Sven-Goran Eriksson, it turns out, isn’t as exciting as he looks. What’s the point, I mean, in opening a Sunday tabloid to read of a man who had a number of girlfriends and — though slightly bitchy about the odd one — makes no heart-rending declarations of love, repentance or shame?

When he says that he honestly couldn’t understand the fuss that was made about his affair with Ulrika Jonsson I’m inclined to believe him. There’s a shrugging matter-of-factness to his approach to his sexual career that’s very unBritish. What of it? he asks.

Babe magnet: Ulrika Jonsson is just one of Sven-Goran Eriksson’s exes (Picture: David Fisher/Rex)
Most public figures guard their privacy as if precious secrets are at stake, which is fuel to the furnace. Sven’s attitude seems to be more: “It’s none of your business. But — sigh — if you must. What is it with you people?” That’s not quite playing the game.

We must help the BBC regain public backing

Yesterday was a bad day for those of us who think that, for all its difficulties and contradictions, a licence-fee-funded BBC is a public good. An ICM poll was reported to have found that 70 per cent of voters believe the licence fee should be either abolished altogether or cut, with the abolitionists much in the majority.

We could shriek that those polled are victims of what Marxists call “false consciousness”, brainwashed by the commercially- and ideologically-driven campaigns against the BBC of Murdoch and co. But that attitude, as well as being condescending, is useless as a practical strategy. The facts on the ground are as they are. We need to take note. The best hope, it seems to me, is to convert abolitionists with the case for a reduced but still publicly-funded BBC.

Korean Kim needs friends with PR skills

Former Chicago Bulls basketball star Dennis Rodman characterises the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un as a “good-hearted kid”. Hereditary despot of a totalitarian regime with a famine-ridden populace and artillery aimed at the capital of its democratic neighbour and nuclear ambitions he may be, but Rodman says Kim just wants the people around him to be happy. To that end, a besotted Rodman reports, he and an entourage of 50 or 60 people enjoy a “seven-star party” life with jet-skis and cocktails.

It occurs to me that if Mr Kim was hoping that palling up with old Rodman would be good for his image in the West, he might want to rethink his PR strategy.